About now, farmers in Iowa and across the Corn Belt get itchy. As the weather warms, they start tuning plows and planters, preparing to put another crop of corn and soybeans in the ground.

Within months, the rural Midwest will largely be a sea of towering stalks filling out ears and squat bean plants putting on pods.

But this sea of biomass has unforeseen effects on Midwestern climate, a study from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology suggests – and, I would argue, contributes to global climate change.

When you’re driving past those carpeted fields this summer, you can thank them for countering higher temperatures driven by greenhouse gas emissions, but curse them for more frequent drenching, violent thunderstorms and tornadoes.

It stands to reason that agriculture – which has never been more intense or widespread in human history – is doing something to our weather. But there are bigger questions about its impact. Read the rest of this entry »

Precautions are generally prudent, wise and forward-looking. We all want to be safe as possible. Why risk a bad outcome?

This is a simple way to consider the Precautionary Principle, an approach regulators often use to consider new technology. It’s best, they say, to be careful, lest unexpected, unwanted consequences crop up. What can be wrong with that?

Plenty, a new report from an Ames-based agricultural policy think tank says. Citing a long string of academic papers and case studies, it blasts misapplication of the Precautionary Principle for blocking technology like genetic engineering of grains while ignoring the costs: less food for a growing population, less income for rural farmers and greater environmental harm.

The principle is ambiguous, arbitrarily applied, and biased against new technologies, the paper says, and its consequences have been mostly negative. It ignores technology’s many benefits while focusing on its risks, no matter how small.

“The [principle] has been tried but has failed as a risk management strategy,” the authors say. “It is time to move beyond it” – a conclusion some environmentalists are sure to challenge.

Just about everyone from Iowa knows about the famed Manson Impact Structure, a divot 23 miles across at the point where Humboldt, Webster, Calhoun and Pocahontas counties meet. Researchers say a meteor smacked the area about 74 million years ago, leaving what the Iowa Geological & Water Survey says is “the largest intact, on-shore meteorite crater in the United States.”

Well, I’m not sure how big the news is here, but earlier this week the Washington Post reported on research suggesting there’s another, smaller (4 miles across) crater in the vicinity of Decorah, in Iowa’s far northeast corner, giving the state an imaginary face a little like Popeye’s.

The story is well done, but doesn’t delve into the interesting Iowan who helped find the first clues of the crater’s existence.